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- [00:01]
Scott R. Anderson
The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad free version of the Lawfare Podcast. Become a material supporter of lawfare@patreon.com lawfare that's patreon.com Lawfair also check out Lawfare's other podcast offerings, Rational Security, Chatter, Lawfare, no Bull, and the Aftermath.
- [00:32]
Jonathan Fields
Hey, this is Jonathan Fields, host of the Good Life Project podcast. Boost Mobile Reminds me of what I love when someone reimagines what's possible. They have invested billions in building America's newest 5G network, becoming the country's fourth major carrier. They are doing things differently, offering a $25 monthly unlimited plan that never increases in price and letting you try their service risk free for 30 days. With blazing fast 5G and plans for all the latest dev, they're changing the game. Visit your nearest Boost Mobile store or find them online@boost mobile.com the Boost Mobile network, together with their roaming partners, covers 99% of the US population. 5G speeds not available in all areas.
- [01:13]
Sophia Yan
They say opposites attract. That's why the Sleep Number Smart Bed is the best bed for couples. You can each choose what's right for you whenever you like. You like a bed that feels firm, but they want soft. Sleep Number does that. You want to sleep cooler while they like to feel warm. Sleep Number does that too. Why choose a Sleep Number Smart bed so you can choose your ideal comfort on either side. Sleep Number Smart beds start at $999. Price is higher in Alaska and Hawaii. Exclusively at a Sleep Number store near you. See store or sleepnumber.com for details.
- [01:48]
Scott R. Anderson
So Natalie, I think I've hit a major parenting hack.
- [01:53]
Natalie Orpet
Oh, do tell.
- [01:54]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, I think I've mentioned before my 4 year old I've gotten into Muppets. I've done that brain meld on him.
- [02:01]
Natalie Orpet
Wait, Scott, let's be honest about the fact that you were into Muppets long before you had children.
- [02:06]
Scott R. Anderson
No? Oh yeah. This has been a lifelong obsession. Something I haven't talked about enough on this podcast recently. Honestly, I feel like the first couple of years was very Muppet heavy and I've kind of let it slide. But I've got new subject matter now, so I started showing my son like the old Muppet shows from the 70s when he was like a year old. There's such like colorful musical characters just like dancing across the screen. Even at that age he was like kind of engaged by at least for like 10 minutes, which is all I could I could get at the time and that was fine. But it's kind of like, built up. So now he likes some of the movies and a couple other things. And then I've also been. He's like, kind of old enough. We started, like doing little, like, fantasy adventure things. We watched the Princess Bride the other day. We're reading him Harry Potter. And so I was. I had him home alone and needed to put on something while I was cooking dinner and watching my daughter. And I stumbled across the perfect intersect of those things. That's the movie Labyrinth. Do you remember Labyrinth?
- [03:02]
Natalie Orpet
No.
- [03:02]
Scott R. Anderson
From the 80s where David Bowie is the Goblin King and has a vaguely inappropriate romance with a 15 year old Jennifer Connelly. It's kind of amazing.
- [03:11]
Natalie Orpet
I have an earthly idea what you're talking about, but it sounds interesting. Alarming.
- [03:16]
Scott R. Anderson
It is amazing. It is this weird genre of adult Jim Henson movies. But then with David Bowie brought in, literally, the trailer we watched was like bringing you together. Three forces of nature. George Lucas, because he's involved too. George Lucas, David Bowie and Jim Henson. I'm like, those are three figures I would never think would necessarily intersect. But like in 1986 or whatever year this was, they magically did. And it's the most bizarre thing ever. Every time, every time I popped in from the kitchen, I would pop in and look, make sure there's like nothing inappropriate happening on tv. And it was just the most bizarre scene of like crazy dancing Muppets kind of fighting at one point. There's just like Muppets that just are just a cannon with legs, like running around shooting cannonballs at each other. It's very strange. My son loved it. He was like wrapped with attention and he like, we turn it off. He just shook his head. He's like, I don't know what that was, but I liked was great.
- [04:13]
Natalie Orpet
I would like to interview the makers of this show and ask them many questions.
- [04:17]
Scott R. Anderson
It is. I mean, I would too, because that's Jim Henson and George Lucas. That'd be a hell of a. That'd be a hell of a get for the Lawfare podcast, I take it. Honestly.
- [04:24]
Natalie Orpet
Surely we can find a national security angle foreign.
- [04:33]
Scott R. Anderson
And welcome back to Rational Security, the podcast where we invite you to join members of the Lawfare team as we try to make sense of the week's biggest national security news stories. I am thrilled to be joined once again by two lawfare two Rational Security and Lawfare mainstays. First, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpet. Thank you for coming back on the podcast.
- [04:53]
Natalie Orpet
Thanks for having me.
- [04:54]
Scott R. Anderson
And Lawfair contributing editor Eric Charmella. It's been a couple weeks, but we're happy to have you back on Eric, welcome back to the podcast.
- [05:01]
Eric Charmella
Good to be with you.
- [05:03]
Scott R. Anderson
Excellent. Well, as you can tell, when Eric is back on the podcast, it usually means we have some things to talk about in the Ukraine vicinity. And in this case, not just the Ukraine vicinity, but the broader Europe vicinity, and then a few topics back here on the home front to hash through together. So excited to have you both on the podcast to help me do that. First up this week, topic one In Mother Russia sometimes bear Pok you Yakov Smirnov back back in the game. I'm told he's still popular in Branson. I learned during our prerecord, which is a good to know. Yakov, if you're listening, I will happily swing by showing brazen at some point. Discussions over a possible broader ceasefire in Ukraine beyond the temporary and limited energy and black ceasefire agreements last week appear to have ground to a halt over Russian demands. Many observers suspect this is simply a stalling technique by Russ President Vladimir Putin as Russia prepares for another offensive intended to improve his negotiating leverage through new facts on the ground. President Trump, meanwhile, in a rare swipe at the Russian dictator, has said he is, quote, pissed off. But will Trump bring leverage to bear enough for Putin to budge, or are the ceasefire negotiations likely to stay stuck in the mud? And if so, will Trump know who to blame? Topic 2 Nuken Futz Vice President J.D. vance visited the northernmost U.S. military base in Greenland last week and delivered a speech in front of US Service members that accused Denmark of neglecting its Greenland protectorate and failing to adequately protect it from China and Russia, shortcomings that, in his telling, justify President Trump's stated intent to gain US Control over the island nation? Is there any truth to Vance's allegations, and will his remarks help or hurt the Trump administration's purported objective of securing Greenland and improving US Access to its various resources? Third term's the charm in an interview this week, President Trump insisted to reporters that he was quite serious about potentially pursuing a third term as president and suggested there were quote unquote methods by which he could do so, in spite of the 22nd Amendment's two term limitation on presidents. How seriously should we take this proposition? Are there arguments that could carry water and will it matter one way or the other? For our first topic, Eric, I want to come to you because obviously few people follow events in relation to Ukraine and particularly the negotiations as closely as you do. We've seen a tumultuous couple of weeks around Ukraine developments. I think we talked. I don't think you actually were on this episode, but a few weeks ago, of course, we had the disastrous Zelensky White House meeting, which appeared, I think, at least from my more casual observation, to be a real nadir in the relationship. A moment where it seemed like at least people in the Trump administration were deliberately kind of setting up Zelenskyy for failure, at least baiting him into doing things that he knew were going to hurt the relationship with the president. He, to some extent, took that bait, although perhaps somewhat understandably, we had this moment of crisis. We saw an end of security cooperation, or at least a pause to it. We saw a delay in signing the minerals agreement, but that did ultimately go through week, and since then it's been relatively quiet, with a little bit of signs of progress towards something. It seems like we do have these small, minor agreements I mentioned in introduction related to a ceasefire around energy infrastructure. Very limited, a lot of caveats, a lot of conditions put on primarily by the Russians, but nonetheless, some sort of ceasefire seems to be in play there. Something similar in the Black Sea. At least a kind of contingent agreement, contingent on the Russian part, about lifting certain sanctions and other restrictions around agricultural products and certain related fertilizer products, as I recall correctly. But now we seem to have hit this new obstacle. The President, for the first time I can remember, has actually said he's not happy with President Putin. Somewhat notable, and if nothing else, at least it's a sign that he sees the Russians as being the obstructing actor on negotiations for a broader ceasefire, not the Ukrainians, or at least not just the Ukrainians. Fill us in a little bit about what we know about this latest obstacle that the ceasefire effort appears to have run into, and what your sense of the dynamics are around the negotiations and how the Trump administration is approaching him.
- [09:06]
Eric Charmella
Sure. So, just backing up a bit to the aftermath of that disastrous Oval Office meeting. There was a frantic attempt by the Europeans, led by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the French President Emmanuel Macron, to patch things up between Kyiv and Washington. There was a hastily arranged summit in London that following weekend with President Zelensky and a bunch of European leaders talking about kind of where we go from here. And the outcome of that was an agreement that Ukraine, together with key European partners, would come up with a more coherent strategy and sort of counter proposal to put back in the hands of the Trump administration that would show that the Ukrainians and the Europeans are actually a constructive party who have their own ideas about how to reach some sort of peace agreement rather than being seen as the stumbling blocks, the one saying no to everything, so on and so forth. The Europeans have an obvious interest in that because they're not even at the table now. I mean, all these talks that have been happening are U.S. russia or U.S. ukraine. There's no European presence anywhere. So I think that the Starmer Macron intervention helped get the train back on the tracks a bit. And we saw, you know, this movement towards the first US Ukrainian meeting which took place in Jeddah, at which basically the Ukrainians accepted the, the idea of an unconditional truce. And it was actually interesting and surprised some of us that there was a joint American Ukrainian statement to that effect, which showed a certain level of solidarity, I think, between the American and Ukrainian sides that actually it might not be there, but it was, it was an interesting kind of move in this whole game to sort of put the ball back in the Russians court and say, actually Washington and Kiev agree on the idea of a ceasefire. Now over to you, Russia to respond. And the Russians somewhat more predictably said, we love peace, we love Donald Trump, but here's A list of 72 conditions that need to be fulfilled, one of which for a broader kind of 30 day truce, including an air cessation of hostilities, was for all Western military aid to be suspended during that period, which is obviously a no go for the Ukrainians, for the Europeans and so on. Then you have these, you have this kind of next ratchet which was to bring the parties back both to Riyadh and have some like proximity talks and to talk in more detailed technical terms at a lower level than National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, at a lower level to discuss the energy and Black Sea ceasefires that you talked about in the beginning. And again, the Russians predictably responded by saying that they were interested in theory, but then layering on a series of conditions on the energy one, it appears to me that it's somewhat in force and that the sides are actually passing do not target lists to one another and generally respecting those. But at the same time, the Russians are taking the view that if you didn't pass us the coordinates of a target, we're still going to target. So when Ukraine is thinking about its energy infrastructure, sure there are a few nuclear power plants and then some major electricity production facilities, but then there's, you know, hundreds of substations and, and all kinds of other energy and energy adjacent infrastructure that the list would be really long. And so they're starting with the big things. But then Russia's hitting everything else in the meantime and basically coloring up to the lines and saying, well, you didn't pass it to us. So it's, it's kind of a, you know, free game here to just shoot what we want. So I would say that's sort of in, partially in effect on the black seaside. As you mentioned, the hang up here is with the Russian Agricultural Export bank, which the Russians are saying needs to be reconnected to swift, which is not an American action, that's a European action that needs to be taken. And the Europeans weren't in this conversation. So now there's a negotiation that needs to happen between Washington and the European allies to sort of reconnect this bank. And of course, the Russians ominously said, and other financial institutions. So it's not clear if they're going to keep moving the goalposts here. But they don't even need this because their exports of, you know, fertilizer and grain have actually gone up even after this agricultural bank came under sanctions. And so they don't need it in order to ship fertilizer to the world market. But it's, I think you're right to interpret this as Russia just kind of throwing a bunch of conditions and then seeing what sticks. The latest iteration, you know, with Putin's really outlandish comments on Friday when he was addressing the the crew of a submarine in Murmansk and said, we need to agree with our partners on a UN transitional government in Ukraine that would be able to deliver us a peace deal because the current leadership is illegitimate, there's no one to sign anything with. Basically they need to become a protectorate of the international community. That seems to have been solidly rejected by Washington. I mean, that's just Putin's long standing goal of denigrating and undermining the legitimacy of Zelensky and the duly elected government of Ukraine. But again, that, that seems to have irked some people in Washington at least. And you get some kind of on background quotes of people saying that that was not helpful and so on and so forth. Finally, on the latest point about whether Trump really is upset with Putin, to be honest, I'll believe it when I see it. It's interesting that that quote came from a reporter who got it in a call with Trump. Trump hasn't said it or we don't have audio of that call to know exactly how he phrased it. He might be pissed with the situation. Is he actually pissed with Putin? I still find that hard to believe. I think that there is still a huge amount of forgiveness that Trump sort of displays towards Putin and, you know, really a desire not to kind of cross Putin and sort of kill him with kindness. And so I don't see yet that level of frustration. Certainly probably people like Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz are getting frustrated, Keith Kellogg and others. But I don't see Trump yet crossing the threshold where he would actually put significant pressure on Putin. So I suppose we'll see.
- [16:11]
Natalie Orpet
I was going to ask you, Eric, what you make of the comments that Trump did make. I think we do have audio of him saying that he understood this sort of approach because the dragging his feet was something that he had done when he was in business. And I wonder if to perhaps wildly speculate because I'm in none of these people's minds. And as you say, we've only gotten some quotes in audio form and some in written form. And it's hard to parse. In addition to the fact that the messaging is all confused, to what extent do you think it's plausible that the sort of being pissed off is really just Trump sort of playing the role of the negotiator on this side while the party that Russia represents is doing its dragging its feet approach that is sort of, as Trump sees it, a classic or at least understandable approach to negotiations?
- [17:11]
Eric Charmella
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think he had a statement a few weeks ago where there was a really large scale Russian attack after one of the rounds of negotiations, and Trump sort of expressed some concern about that, but then said, of course it's natural they would be doing this and blowing up a bunch of stuff in Ukraine. That's what I would do, too. So I do think he, you know, he thinks this is all kind of part of the game of the negotiation, and he's kind of coming at it from a position of understanding these delay tactics. But I don't think he sees it as representative of a deeper problem in the negotiation, which is that fundamentally there's no evidence that the Russians want anything close to the outcome that, well, certainly not what the Ukrainians and the Europeans want. But even what Trump wants, which is some sort of reasonable, lasting settlement that sees Ukraine preserved as a sovereign state. I mean, I think that's the basics of what Trump wants. And I don't see any evidence that Putin is comfortable with that, especially if he's still making slow, albeit costly, progress on the battlefield. And, you know, there's been reporting in the past few days from Ukrainian military sources that they're seeing evidence of preparations on the Russian side for another major assault in early summer. So, again, if Russia's gearing up for another huge offensive, thinks it could take more territory. You know, this stalling is not maybe what Trump thinks it is, which is trying to get a better price. If you're haggling at, you know, the market or something. It's actually just fundamentally that the Russians don't want to deal right now, and they need to draw this out to the point where then they're ready to launch another offensive, and then they can be an even better position in the fall.
- [19:08]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah.
- [19:08]
Natalie Orpet
And I wondered if a secondary objective in dragging it out is not only to, as you say, sort of change the reality on the ground by being able to continue offensives where possible. And I'll note, also didn't Putin just call up 160,000 more recruits? But I wonder if a secondary purpose of dragging this out is a desire on the part of Putin to continue to cultivate and explore a new sort of relationship with the United States. Because the longer it drags out and the more back and forth there is, the more there's room to establish a new norm. And particularly if the goal is to continue to drive a wedge between the Americans and the Europeans and to just sort of fundamentally change the world order, it seems that dragging things out is a useful tool for that objective as well.
- [20:01]
Eric Charmella
Yeah, I completely agree. And I think there are still kind of big questions here about what the overall strategy is from the Trump administration. Is it first and foremost to get. Get a peace in Ukraine and the killing to stop, as President Trump talks about, and to do so in a way that, you know, at least is. Is minimally sustainable over an extended period of time, which means that it's at least somewhat fair to the Ukrainians and they can accept it. Or is the bigger strategic objective to kind of get Ukraine issue off the plate so that there can be this bigger U. S. Russia kind of transformational deal that would see commercial energy and other economic linkages reestablished and would sort of move towards this idea of the great powers being able to come together and solve the world's problems like Iran, which Putin has put on the table as something that the Russians might be able to help with dangling Again, I think the Russia, Iran relationship has advance to the point where Russia sees very little benefit to constraining Iran at this point. But again, you know, it appeals to Trump's idea that get together with the strong leaders in the world, Putin, Xi, maybe the Indians, and you sort of solve the big questions, if that's really what's on the other end of this, in the mind of Trump and the inner circle, you know, then I kind of, I see that we're on a really fast ticking clock here where if Ukraine and the Europeans can't come up with some sort of reasonable way to salvage this in the next month or two, maybe at most, then I think the, the train is going to leave the station and, you know, we're in more worst case scenario territory where you end up with a, with a default scenario where Trump gets together with Putin, they agree on the general terms of this sort of peace, and then it's forced down the throats of Ukrainians and Europeans and it's all in service of, you know, resetting this relationship. And that, like you said, Putin is sort of playing along and stalling for time because he sees that, like, with enough time, that big deal will just fall into his lap.
- [22:22]
Scott R. Anderson
Well, that gets to the part of this that is the biggest question mark for me and a bit of a black box, as it often is with these high level policy discussions, which is the personal dynamics, which always plays a role in any sort of international negotiations or domestic internal negotiations as well. But I feel like in the Trump administration, when President Trump himself is particularly involved, really becomes center stage. And so we saw that in, of course, the Zelensky meeting, the aftermath of that. But since then, it seems like we've got a more functional dynamic happening. Right now. You've got some degree of Ukrainian US Solidarity, at least around certain key points. The fact that nobody seriously seemed to consider buying in to the Putin assertion, the suggestion that maybe Zelenskyy and his continuance in government is a problem I take as kind of a good sign. Because of course, we heard calls for Zelensky to step down just a month ago from really close Trump allies. Those seem to have quieted. Now, what has been the secret to creating these more effective dynamics between the Ukrainians and the Americans? Is it keeping things below a certain level, keeping things at a technical level? And can it survive engagement by President Trump and or President Zelenskyy or both? Because they seem to have a toxic personal dynamic. Can you keep them out of it this long? I mean, it seems like Trump is still directly talking to Putin. He's talking about calls he's had on them about this stuff so far that hasn't derailed this whole process. But how durable is whatever more effective dynamic seems to have been crafted by those involved to that sort of intervention? Is that the timeframe you're talking about, or is it, you know, Just one of these things that they have to keep it at a level below Trump's radar to avoid the sort of disruptions that can come from his more personal intervention.
- [24:10]
Eric Charmella
I think Zelenskyy's apology was a big, or, you know, I don't even know that it was a direct apology, but regret for the situation and whatnot was sort of a big step to patching things up. And, you know, the fact again, that Trump sort of waved it around and said, like, I got this apology from Zelenskyy, which by the way, you know, was helped on the Ukrainian side by some very deliberate sort of coaching by European partners to kind of say, we need to get this back into a better situation. So, so the Zelenskyy apology, I think the intervention by Starmer and Macron, who still have a pretty good relationship with Trump, being the ones to pass messages at the leader level. I mean, Zelensky was saying he talks to Macron practically every day at this point, and Starmer probably almost as often. So you've got European leaders in the lead on kind of the, the outreach to Trump himself. And so Zelensky is a little bit more removed. And then finally, as you mentioned, getting some of this into lower level conversations where you can have of sort of more technical level talks. You know, the Ukrainian Defense Minister, Rustem Lomerov was the one who led the most recent round. And he's, you know, pretty easy person to engage with, fluent English. You know, I've met him before. He's a, he's a pretty kind of charismatic guy who you can have a no bullshit conversation with. And I think that appealed to American interlocutors. And so they had the sense that there is a seriousness on the Ukrainian side and then they can report that back up their chain. And Trump feels like they're getting somewhere. I think the combination of all of those things has defused the toxicity for the time being. But, yeah, at some point there's going to need to be a re engagement at the leader level between Trump and Zelensky. And you just have to hope that at that point some of the pieces are in place so that that can be maximally productive. The one sort of other thing looming which you mentioned in the beginning is this minerals deal, which has gone through so many iterations and is probably subject for another conversation just about the kind of legal aspects of this and sort of the unprecedented nature. But the original deal that Treasury Secretary Besant brought to Kyiv in February was not acceptable to the Ukrainians. It would have basically indebted them for generations to pay back this enormous sum of money that is not commensurate with the kind of minerals and rare earths that are in the ground in Ukraine. So that was a problem. Then they reach this more limited kind of MOU that then Zelenskyy intended to sign. And then you had the Oval Office blow up. And now we've gone into phase three of this, which is that the American side appears to have gone back to some earlier version with some additional, let's say, innovations that have made it, again, a very difficult deal for the Ukrainians to sign because they're locking themselves into essentially foreign control of their land and their resources. And it's completely understandable why a democratically elected Ukrainian government can't say. Basically, we sign up to being colonized by the United States after we've been spilling our blood to not get colonized by Russia for the last three years. And so, you know, Trump has made some ominous signs about if the Ukrainians don't sign this, we're going to have problems and so on and so forth. I hope that cooler heads can prevail and that some version of like the second framework deal, which was a fair deal and I think a mutually beneficial deal, can be returned to, but if not, then I do think we're going to have another blow up between Trump and Zelensky probably in the next week or two.
- [28:04]
Scott R. Anderson
So before we move on from this topic, there's one aspect of this I want to get into, and that's the hard nuts and bolts warfare fighting aspect of this. That is, we have to remember, ongoing in the background of all of this still being a very hard fought war on the ground in Ukraine every day, with only very limited ceasefires, only kind of in place. But we still have this idea of another Russian offensive percolating in the background. Maybe there's a bluster element of that, maybe that is just an effort to keep kind of options available to the Russians. But alternatively, it also kind of makes sense, at least before this whole negotiation process stood up, it looked like Ukrainians were a little bit more on their back heels compared to the Russians. Or at least we're shifting dynamics slightly that way. And of course, Ukrainians have been living through several months of Trump administration support at this point, which has been much more mercurial, limited, cut off at various points in terms of intelligence sharing, materiel, other forms of support. Do we have a sense about where the dynamics on the ground are right now? If there were another major Russian offensive, how would the Ukrainians Fare and do we have a sense about what that would require of the Americans? Is that going to put pressure on the Trump administration to say, look, if we want to keep our ceasefire negotiation prospects alive, we are going to have to back the Ukrainians more than we have so far? Have they made up for some of the deficiencies of the cutoffs and the pauses we've seen over the last few months, or is there still a pretty, pretty limited supply line going to the Ukrainians, as we know was the case just a couple weeks ago?
- [29:38]
Eric Charmella
You know, I think the Ukrainian position on the battlefield now is, is bad, but not catastrophic, and they're managing to hold the line. They did have to withdraw from Kursk Oblast in Russia. You know, I think people thought that that might have actually happened sooner, but the Ukrainians were able to hold out until, you know, only a few weeks ago. They've lost that as a, as a negotiating chip, bargaining chip with the Russians, but they're holding on elsewhere. They're digging a lot of trenches and building fortifications in some of the hotspots. There's still a pretty steady supply of American and European weapons going in. Some of the weapons that are going in were contracted under the Biden administration for new production under Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. So, you know, it's not like once the funding ended and presidential drawdown authorities ended, everything goes to zero immediately. There is a, you know, kind of a tail for this. You've also got the, the 50 billion dollar loan that Ukrainians can spend on weapons. There's also discussion of how to use the new European money and whether purchasing some American weapons is part of that equation or not. So I think there are solutions there to keep the Ukrainians equipped for, you know, the remainder of this year without probably a major additional ask of Congress. You might need to get some like, drawdown authorities or whatever. But, but the money could come from other sources. For the Ukrainians. Again, there, there is a huge amount of exhaustion, understandably, in the force. There's still some manpower issues, but at the same time, they're really looking at creative ways to compensate by using unmanned technologies and, and other things like that to stabilize the, the front. So that's a roundabout way of saying that I think it will depend on what type of offensive we're talking about and, you know, how big and well organized it is on the Russian side. If it's just another version of what they've been doing at Pokrovsk, this city, that they have been throwing tens of thousands of troops into the Russians and failing to advance for many, many months at a huge cost. Again, a place that most Americans have never heard of, then I think the Ukrainians are well positioned to hold back. But if the Russians launch some major attack on a new axis, you know, coming in from Belarus or coming in towards Sumy oblast in the north or towards Kharkiv in the northeast, I think it will be a bit more of a challenge for the Ukrainians, just based on the geography there and the forces that they have in the area.
- [32:21]
Natalie Orpet
Before we move on, I had one more thing I'd love to get your thoughts on, Eric, which is Trump's threat to impose 25 or 50% secondary tariffs on countries that import Russian oil, which I think was being portrayed in conjunction with the possibility that Trump actually meant it when he said that he was, quote, pissed off with Putin. I'm wondering. I mean, obviously it doesn't mean anything until it actually happens or there are actual moves toward it happening, if it's just a statement. But I'm curious what your assessment is of it, and if we were to entertain the possibility that it could happen, what sort of wrench that would throw into this whole mix?
- [33:06]
Eric Charmella
I mean, again, it's very hard to separate the bluster from real policy options here. I mean, would it be a 25 to 50% blanket tariff on all goods from any country that imports Russian oil, which would be China, India, a lot of other major countries? And I just. I'm not sure exactly how he would operationalize that and how he would separate it out from the other tariffs that may or may not be coming tomorrow or today when this airs. So I guess the. The devil's in the details. But if he is actually willing, on a conceptual basis, to start, you know, imposing some sort of secondary costs on Russian energy exports, I do think that that will pose significant challenges for the Russian side, you know, because you will have some countries that are kind of forced to reassess the cost benefit of continuing to import Russian oil, you know, again, in the face of these sanctions and punitive measures from the United States. And again, the. The oil revenue is a major part of what it funds, Russia's continued rearmament.
- [34:19]
Jonathan Fields
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- [34:59]
Sophia Yan
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- [35:32]
Scott R. Anderson
Auto insurance can all seem the same until it comes time to use it. So don't get stuck paying more for less coverage. Switch to USA Auto insurance and you could start saving money in no time.
- [35:42]
Eric Charmella
Get a quote today restrictions apply.
- [35:50]
Scott R. Anderson
Well, speaking of conflict in Europe, let us turn our eyes to the more northern stretch of that continent. Not really. That continent involves a country in the northern stretch of that continent. Technically, it's in our continent. It wasn't until World War II. FDR said no. In fact, it is in North America.
- [36:07]
Natalie Orpet
In short, geography is hard, geography is.
- [36:10]
Scott R. Anderson
Hard, and Greenland is in a hard part of it. So let's talk about Greenland. We saw a pretty extraordinary event last week. Vice President J.D. vance decided to tag along and largely derail a visit his wife, the second lady Usha Vance, had been planning, along with a couple of other Trump administration officials. As I recall, the original agenda was Usha Vance was going to visit Greenland, visit towns, interact with people. Although there were some reports that they were having trouble finding many Greenlanders who were willing to interact with them in a kind of photo sensitive setting. But who knows if that's true or not. That's just reporting, but Vice President decided he wanted to come along. They did not really clear it with the Danes, which usually do if you have an official visit to another country or the Greenlanders as well, I should say to another country. You don't send your senior officials there without some sort of permission. If nothing else, so that they can extend sovereign immunity, they won't face prosecution for things. And then they restricted the visit to just a US military base, or I should say space base as it's actually been Transferred to the Space Force. This is the northernmost US Military establishment in the world where JD Vance took a tour, had a number of photos with some very puffy jackets on touring the very cold environs around this military base, and then gave a pretty extraordinary speech in front of a number of very awkward looking American service members, which I felt very bad for, who were obviously on committed to staying completely emotionless and non responsive and standing behind him through the extended remarks. And the speech was about a number of things, kind of sprawling. I feel like Vance is drifting a little bit more in the Trump style in that he is trying to pull a lot of threads together in these speeches that he has taken to giving primarily in Europe every other week or so. But the key takeaway here is really doubling down on President Trump's Greenland stance. Trump has really, since his first term, but particularly this term, doubled down on the idea that the United States needs control of Greenland. And Vance said, look, we have this policy because Denmark has not done its job vis a vis Greenland of protecting it. It's neglected. It's neglected investing into its neglected security. We need to protect Greenland from China and Russia. And that's why the United States needs to be involved. And among other things, kind of talked down the signal gate controversy around the use of signal for plotting attacks in Yemen to play up this idea. The idea that this is actually a bigger controversy, the neglect of Greenland. This is a bigger policy and a serious one that people need to be paying attention to. Natalie, I want to start with you on this because I think this trend that Vance has is really interesting. We now have kind of three major data points, right? We had Vance's speech at Munich Security Conference, which really dug into Europeans for, among other things, kind of how they treat right wing, what many people consider extreme right wing parties in their own political systems, accusing them of censorship, also to some extent of religious communities there, among a number of other issues. But that was kind of a big focus of that remark, kind of criticizing them for their own domestic affairs and their own failures, failures, what he views as their failures of democracy. We then had the signal gate controversy where one of the more notable takeaways was that Vance actually intervened to try and persuade people on the thread, which are members of the National Security Council, that President Trump didn't understand the extent to which the action they understood he had approved was inconsistent with the administration's broader policy towards Europe and essentially said he he objected to bailing Europe out again, although it did ultimately accede to the actions in question. This triggered to the all caps pathetic comment from Defense Secretary Hegseth expressing a common view about Europe's inability to defend its own economic and security interests or unwillingness to do so as perceived and notably as part of that, the idea that the cost of that military action is going to go back to Europe and then Egypt as well, brought into the formula, although we haven't seen any reports about how that's going to be done or whether that's happening or not yet. And now we have this speech. And I'm curious what your read on this is about Vance's role in the administration and particularly in its foreign policy more generally. You know, vice presidents have a wide variety of roles they can play, sometimes very substantive roles, sometimes very not very substantive roles. It really is up to the president. We know Vance has played a leading role around confirmations. He's been a major POC for the administration in kind of rallying Senate support for their lead nominees. But I don't think we have a super strong sense of his substantive agenda to the extent he is actively involved in policy conversations. But it looks like Europe is at least a big focus that he is interested in. Or is that being put on him by the administration because it is a common thread of some of his biggest, highest profile events and particularly these public speeches, which vice presidents don't always do. But these two have both gotten national pickup. We're broadcast live on cnn. That's a suggestion the administration was signaling to media network like this is a big deal speech. You should cover this. So I'm curious about your sense, Natalie. Where do you think this is coming from? Is this a Trump agenda? Is this a Vance agenda? How does it fit into the broader worldview and what does it tell us about kind of the personalities and worldviews influencing the direction of US Foreign policy? Recognizing the Trump administration is far from unitary whole, but is really a kind of a collection of individuals and camps with different views.
- [41:47]
Natalie Orpet
Yeah, I mean, I think the short answer is that we don't really know. Right. Because Vance does not have a long track record of views on these sorts of foreign policy matters. And he's made comments in the past. But if we know anything about his sort of political trajectory, it's that he has formulated himself to meet the moment and take advantage of opportunities to gain power and authority and influence along the way. So whether he has a specific personal interest in Europe and in these themes that we've heard him talk about quite a bit in terms of having the Europeans pay their fair share and changing the relationship and all of that, whether that's a personal interest of his or whether he is playing the role of translating or putting a post hoc explanation or fleshing out on some of the more controversial comments that Trump has made, I don't think we know. I think for all intents and purposes, in terms of its impact in the world, it doesn't really matter which reality that is. But I think that I noted exactly the same things that you did. In particular, that this raises some questions about whether we should understand there being daylight between Vance's position on things or Vance's portrayal of the US Position on things versus Trump's. The, the prime example here being that he was sort of explaining that when Trump said we need Greenland, that what that really meant was not we need Greenland to be ours, it's that we need to change our relationship with Greenland and make sure that Greenland is safe, and we believe that the Greenlanders will exercise their own self determination, et cetera, et cetera. It was a translation that was a generous, let us say, explanation of what the words that were sort of facially obvious in meaning that Trump had to say, what they actually meant in Vance's telling.
- [43:51]
Scott R. Anderson
Eric, I want to turn the same question to you, but open the aperture up a little bit broader. Vance, the political figure as the individual institution of the Trump administration is one kind of question. But I'm also curious what this perspective can or should be read into in the strategic vision of the Trump administration, to the extent there is one, because we are beginning to see signs of at least an effort to formulate a strategic vision. We're seeing particularly reports out of the Defense Department this week about this broad strategic strategy really emphasizing China. Kind of aggressive pivot to China consciously neglecting and downplaying de investing or divesting in other regional priorities, like European security, like counterterrorism efforts, even to some extent, spitting them off to local regional partners to double down on countering China, and particularly around Taiwan, but also around other things in East Asia. Is this reflective of that? Is that a part of the strategic picture? Or is this something that's harder to reconcile with a strategic vision that the Trump folks may be advancing or appear to be advancing?
- [45:01]
Eric Charmella
I think the strategic vision that's emerging is definitely one of applying significant pressure to traditional allies and partners to stop what they see as free riding on American security guarantees and to get wealthier countries to, quote, unquote, pay up, up. You know, I think that's sort of Trump's idea, but I think what Vance is doing is turning that from more transactional approach to one that's like rooted in a much more expansive ideology that is against the, you know, kind of liberal global elite which Europe represents, you know, the rules based order. And it's very kind of bureaucratic legal system where you don't have, you know, strong leaders like you do in Russia and China and Saudi Arabia and so on and so forth, but you have regular elections and parliamentary systems and maybe it's not very interesting and those leaders are not kind of jailing their opponents and so on and so forth. But you know, I think there's this general thought that Europe is kind of weak and degenerate and, you know, hyper liberal. Again, it all flows from this, this Munich Security Conference speech that Vance gave, which I think shocked a lot of Europeans. And so I just see him as, as the pointy end of the spear on this part of the administration's overall grand strategy, which is, you know, not only to reorient US Defense resources towards China, but also to, to dismantle this kind of global liberal rules based consensus that has existed between the United States and its partners for many decades and to replace that with something more sharper elbowed. And so the visit to Greenland, again, I think it's, it's part of that. It's an easy way to poke at Europeans. I mean, it's odd to me just given how much Denmark is a model ally and is hardly the kind of manifestation of, you know, the lazy Europeans that kind of Vance and Trump are talking about. Actually, the Danes have been kind of with us all around the world in ways that most allies haven't been, and they're looking for any kind of productive conversation with us and want more American presence in Greenland because it is actually very hard for them to secure, you know, a landmass of that size. But Vance and the administration have chosen to go about it in the most incendiary possible way, I think because they have this broader agenda of just knocking the entire European project down several pegs.
- [47:58]
Natalie Orpet
Yeah, I mean, it seemed to me, I read this as very much in keeping with that, that it's a rhetorical exercise more than anything. It's not about the objective of making Greenland more secure because as a number of people pointed out, including some Greenlanders who were interviewed and some Danish officials that were interviewed, they pointed out Greenland is a member of NATO and there's no reason that the United States couldn't just expand its military presence. And in fact, as you say, Eric, Greenland and Denmark would both actually be supportive of that. And the U.S. has had presence in Greenland since 1941. And at some point, I think during the Cold war, there were 16 different US bases in Greenland. And there's no reason that if the real concern is not having enough military presence of the United States and Greenland, that the way to go about doing that is this, or is saying things are so bad right now that surely your only wish, Greenlanders, is that you would become a part of the United States. And I mean, needless to say, there was no acknowledgment whatsoever of the fact that there have been plenty of polls of greenlanders who are 85% opposed to becoming part of the United States in any capacity. And as you were mentioning, Scott, there were a number of events that were planned and then sort of unceremoniously canceled because it turned out that. That there were going to be a bunch of protests. And it was another instance, I suppose, not surprising, but always very dismaying to me of using the people, in this case the Greenlanders, as a prop for making an argument that really has no bearing on the actual people and what their wishes or needs are. I saw an interesting, just as a small side note here, I saw an interesting interview with a. A journalist in Greenland who was saying we pay attention to how Americans treat their indigenous populations in Alaska. It's not like people in Greenland are not aware of what's going on here, what the broader dynamics are, and they are not sort of a political prop to just be thrown into rhetoric that's targeting elsewhere.
- [50:18]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, that's really, I think a gets to a core kind of consideration I've been wrestling with, which is just how seriously we should take the Trump administration when it says it's got strategic interests and it's willing to leverage and kind of bully towards them. But you can't reconcile it with a lot of its broader actions. I mean, in this case, in the Greenland, Denmark case, I think it's really, really pretty clear that they are making it harder to get what they want, which is an increased military presence in Greenland and around Greenland and increased access to mineral resources, or at least it's far clear for me that they're not making it harder because both of those are measures that are going to require some domestic political support in Denmark and Greenland, barring an actual US Military invasion of some sort, which set aside whether that's constitutional, I think it's probably just not politically actually plausible and a little bit of an empty threat. But the coercive measures, the coercive tools just seem like they are making it harder for these communities to agree to things that they would ever want. And if your idea is that, well, we want to insulate, we want to both have access to these resources and have control over the security umbrella over Greenland. That is something that traditionally coordinating with allies has let us do. The American global military presence is around precisely because European allies allow us to be there and invite us to be there and coordinate with us. They amplify our military presence. Perhaps we do unfairly or not, a disproportionate share of the spending and bear disproportionate burden, but nonetheless our reach, our access is really contingent on that. And the sort of bullying, yeah, maybe you can extract some coerced concessions, but you're never going to have the fulsome embrace an actual genuine ties that you would want to have actual interoperability or actually sustainable extraction operations, a major US Business initiative in Greenland because it's always going to be perceived as coercive and those communities are always going to be inclined and probably have political incentives to push back or cabinet because they're going to be worried about the United States coercing even more and taking even more more. It just strikes me as foundationally unproductive and a real sign of how much trouble this administration has matching its ends and means. I totally believe them when they say we want to have better security for Greenland and better access to it. I actually think that probably makes sense. That's a better policy. Biden, the Biden administration said similar things at various points, even though it wasn't nearly as high a priority. There's a logic to that at least. But what's not logical is the way they seem to be going about getting that because they're just undermining it. Am I being too unfair, Eric, or does that strike you as a. I.
- [53:06]
Eric Charmella
Think you're actually possibly being a little too charitable about the goals. I mean, is it really just to get an increased military presence in order to counter, you know, threats from China and Russia? Or again, is there something a little bit more imperial behind all of this? I mean, if you kind of go into not even the depths of Twitter, but even kind of Fox News over the past few weeks as they've been talking about this Greenland story, I mean, there's almost a giddiness in in Trump world about the idea of expanding the borders of the United States, enlarging the United States and this kind of manifest destiny and this uncharted territory that, you know, Americans can go and have kind of free rein to settle and the Local population be damned. And so, you know, I don't know that it's just a pragmatic set of goals, I think. I think some in the administration, like Rubio and Waltz, probably see a more straightforward security argument there. But then others have this more expansionist argument. And I was just really struck by I was rereading Sophia Besch and Jeremy Shapiro's article for Lawfare on Greenland. And, you know, one quote stood out to me, which was, europeans may wake up one morning soon to find out that they are now more like members of the Warsaw Pact than members of a democratic democratic alliance. And it's this, you know, idea also that the United States is throwing around its weight within NATO in a way that's more like a protection racket than any kind of political military alliance and kind of fundamentally rewriting the rules of the system potentially with these expansionist goals in mind. I mean, it's a bit mind boggling, I think, for Americans to, to think about that in this current day and age, especially when you've got Putin making very similar arguments about Ukraine and Xi Jinping making similar arguments about Taiwan. I mean, it's just really strange to hear this coming out of the mouths of senior American officials.
- [55:06]
Natalie Orpet
Yeah. Eric, you mentioned Mike Waltz, who, it's worth noting, was actually there with the vice president, as was the Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright and the second lady and also Waltz's wife. And I was thinking to myself, by the way, that remember when it was a scandal when spouses would attend events with the officials of the U.S. government? That was a quaint time. And I will end with one last extremely petty observation, which is that in watching the remarks of the vice president, who as folks may recall, was recently in a famous Oval Office meeting that we referenced previously with President Zelensky of Ukraine, where he had some choice words for the prime minister, the vice president was not wearing a suit. He was wearing a strange, not sort of military looking thing without explanation. And I just leave that with you as an observation in passing.
- [56:07]
Scott R. Anderson
All right. Speaking of presidential ends and means, let us go to our third topic where we are seeing some discussions around the extension of presidential ends and means past what many saw as the prior constitutional barrier. This isn't a new conversation. This is something President Trump has always floated, even back when he was in his first term, he would float the possibility of pursuing a third or longer term. Now in his second term, it looks somewhat more ominous. And while it's always come off as a bit of bravado, something happened this week that appears to convinced at least a good part of the online commentariat that this should be taken much more seriously. In an interview with reporters, Trump doubled down and said essentially, no, I'm quite serious about potentially exploring a third term. Didn't say he's going to do it, but said he's not joking, he's taking it seriously, and suggested there are quote, unquote methods by which he would do so, leading many to ask, well, what exactly are these methods? Methods and people resurrecting a number of law review articles written to originally facilitate a Bill Clinton third term or Barack Obama third term, now appearing to lay down a golden path towards a potential Trump third term, specifically by approaching the 22nd Amendment, an amendment which of course says no one shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice, but people point out elected. That's just one way which you can arrive at the presidency. You can also arrive there if somebody were to resign. So if you were the vice president, you would not be elected to the president more than twice, but you would still be the president. If the person elected president resigned, you could do the same thing with speaker of the House or president pro tempo or of the Senate or other people in the line of succession if you can knock out people above you sufficiently to step into those roles. Natalie, I want to turn to you on this one. I want to dig into the substance of these arguments, arguments. It's worth talking about. It's kind of interesting. I don't think we're going to reach any resolution here, but I kind of get your gut check as somebody who's now been in a position with us here at lawfare, to encounter a lot of these unorthodox legal arguments that get raised in these strange political times we're in and talk to you about how we should think about them. How do you actually approach these sorts of questions when they get raised, which is increasingly kind of recurring topic? And yeah, this is the topic of the week, but we're going to have another one two weeks from now. How should we, as observers, as media consumers, approach them, think about them, know when to panic, when not to panic.
- [58:38]
Natalie Orpet
So my prevailing sense is that this is all a big distraction. And yes, there are legal arguments to be made because we are, in fact, lawyers and you can make a legal argument about anything you damn well please because that is the nature of your education in the law. So I find the I mean, sure, if you're interested in what legal debates there are to be had, read them, enjoy. It is interesting, you know People do a lot of digging and the microscopic attention to text is sure interesting. I don't know. I mean, as you can probably tell from my tone of voice, I don't find it particularly interesting in terms of how I currently want to spend my time.
- [59:19]
Scott R. Anderson
If it were, doesn't mean you shouldn't submit pieces to lawfare on the topic. For the record, we will have one of our editors who does find it interesting review them in addition to Natalie to give it a fair share.
- [59:29]
Natalie Orpet
No, but I mean, to be perfectly honest, this is the beauty of lawfare, because we would publish a piece that talks about it, because we don't need all of our pieces to be dedicated to what's important in the moment. What's the most strategically important. What we can focus on ranges from. From something that is very pressing to something that is just a purely interesting legal argument that's worth pausing on. In terms of what the broader commentariat should be focusing on, this is a distraction. There are a lot of other important, timely things going on. There are just short of four more years left in this administration, so we don't quite yet need to be thinking about whether he is going to pursue a third term or on what basis he would do that. Yes, I realize that you announce and start running for things long term before that, but I guess part of my sense of this is if he really wants to run for a third term, I'm not convinced that he's going to rely so heavily on a legal justification for doing it. There are a lot of other ways to try to get at that outcome that would be through different paths. And I'm not convinced that bolstering to the fullest extent possible, the legal justification for doing it under these very nitty gritty constitutional interpretations is the only way, nor the preferable way. But we're not going to know until we get closer to that time. And in the meantime, there are a lot of really important things that deserve more attention than this.
- [61:02]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, it's worth noting. I think one of the people pushing this conversation the last few months in particular has been a guy who's a friend of lawfare, Ian Bassin, who is one of the founders and one of the leaders of Protect Democracy, a group we work with a lot. This is a topic he's kind of hit on a number of times, actually, going back to the first Trump term, where I believe he wrote a couple papers through Protect Democracy. He may have even written something for Lava on it at some point, if I'm vaguely recalling, or somewhere else but most recently gave a fairly high profile interview with Politico running down some of these arguments. Let me flag the four arguments as he lays out because you're right, they're not all legal arguments. He says essentially Trump could from I think arguably in spectrum from the most lawful to the least level. I think it's fair to say that's how he's ordering these. Trump could try and build a popular movement to repeal the 22nd Amendment directly. That'd be a super, super high bar and a heavy lift, but not impossible. And if he thinks he's a popular enough president to win a third term, perhaps that's something he could do. Topic two, he could exploit the loophole that I just mentioned about this idea that you could be become president without being elected more than twice, but through some other mechanism, although we should circle back and see what that means. Third, he could run for president again and just bet the Supreme Court's not going to block him. Have them essentially bet that they're going to bend a political will. That's how a lot of people read the Section 3 of the 14th Amendment immunity. And I generally agree the Supreme Court doesn't really like to block democratic processes. The Supreme Court in particular for this president in particular, although I'm not sure that that means that a line this clear is one that's easy for him to avoid if he did run for actually to be elected a third time. There's not a lot of ambiguity for them to capitalize on in the 22nd Amendment. The fourth one is he could simply refuse to leave. You know, this would be a more formal sort of coup if you were to call it where he just simply stays in the office. Clearly unlawful. They're not even embracing a pretext of being lawful at that point or of getting Supreme Court court blessing in that particular scenario. I think it raises obstacles as well. Eric, let me turn to you on this. I'm kind of curious for the non lawyer's perspective, particularly somebody who has frankly spent a lot of time studying and watching very carefully democracies on a spectrum from functional to not particularly functional to not particularly democratic or democracies, which of these keeps you up at night, if any, or is this really just such a remote consideration? We shouldn't be spending too much mental energy on it, except for those law professors for who whom this is how they get their publications and their plaudits and are always digging to the sort of esoterica that will become relevant years from now, assuming those people are going to write what they're going to write about, and it's always okay for them to dig into these sorts of obscure topics. What about the rest of the population? To what extent should we be wasting our time on this?
- [63:48]
Eric Charmella
I mean, it does sound pretty outlandish to me, but I suppose we're in a new reality where things that previously didn't seem possible are possible and legal barriers are being crossed in ways that I think many of us, you know, would not have thought would have been crossed. And so my question would be, if we game out this scenario where six months from now, Trump does announce I'm running again in 28, you know, what are the next steps? Who has standing at that point to bring a case? And I mean, at that point, Congress would have to impeach and remove him in order to bar him. So Congress really can't do anything to kind of stop him at that point. So if it rests entirely on the courts, like you'd have to, again, how would this case be brought? And, and if he defies it, then is it onto the states and individual states about whether they put him onto the ballot or not? And are there things that he can do within his executive power to control, you know, the spigot of federal funding to states to force them to put his name on the ballot and so on and so forth? Again, that's where, you know, I would just wonder, like, the nuts and bolts of how this would actually work.
- [65:12]
Scott R. Anderson
Eric, I think that's a sign you've been spending too much time around lawyers when you bring standing up in your question of a response about this sort of political controversy. But I think that's exactly right. I mean, that's the framework I take to these things now more and more, as I think about them, is when you encounter these outlandish arguments, it's not just because I have a small standing obsession. It's because the real question isn't what's the right answer? Because the truth is the right answer will be determined by nine people who see the world very differently than you and I do. And we don't know exactly how they see the world and what's informing their views. And we can all take guesses. And yes, we should inform the record and develop the cases one way or the other. But we're not going to know the answer until we get this process in place and how it gets there, if it even gets to the Supreme Court. A lot of these questions will be resolved before that. And that really is actually the part of this that I do think warrants Some consideration is this idea about saying, okay, if this is something Trump shows seriousness about it. We need to start thinking about where in the process people could try and get clarity on this legal issue answer sooner rather than later. Because I do think the longer you wait in the process, the more that political pressure is going to build, the more disruptive there will be the legitimate pressure, which is that the later in the process you get, the more and more voters, Republican primary voters will have vested their democratic rights into Donald Trump only to find he's disqualified. I think that actually probably should weigh on courts weighing these questions to some extent. Ideally, it would lead them to. To resolve these questions earlier. We did not see that in the Section 3 of the 14th Amendment case, Trump v. Anderson, that came forth this past term. Instead, the Supreme Court kind of delayed humd. Aha. Same with the special Counsel's office, resolved it with some degree of expedition, but could have done so a lot faster, at least in my view. So I think hopefully maybe the Supreme Court, at least in cases like this, might be more willing from this experience to consider resolving it. The Section 3 litigation was a little tricky because it was kind of a difficult question. Muddier, this one. It's like a little clearer. It's a little more at least constrained universe of how you interpret the 22nd Amendment in a particular context. And I do think you have to think about, well, how early in the process can we see challenges? One remainder we have from the Section 3 case is this idea that states, states may be able to evaluate qualifications for office when they put people on the ballot. So maybe that's a time where activists should at some point try and draw a challenge, which would happen somewhat earlier, but not if it's just the vice president. Because of course, the vice President doesn't come into play until you've already got the president selected and the presidential nominee who selects their own vice president. So that would happen kind of after a convention, traditionally. But maybe you could have an argument that the fact that Trump declares his intent to pursue this mechanism, which he would have to do to be able to help his accomplice, presumably J.D. vance or someone else, get elected and ride his own political boons. Well, as soon as he says that and it becomes clear that's the plan, maybe that's a point where a competitor in the election could at least challenge them or a Republican voter who wants to see their vote count, you need to start gaming out the standing question. Exactly who's going to challenge this and through what forum and how quickly can we get resolutions on it. That, to me, is the bigger question that comes from this. Insofar as this becomes a scenario where we see a lot, it creates a lot of this ambiguity. How are we equipped in doing this and resolving this? And then more fundamentally, insofar as we might get Congress open to reform before the scenario arises, that seems unlikely, but it's possible. Or maybe for future similar scenarios, maybe Congress needs to start building mechanisms in to resolve these issues sooner rather than later if we're living in this political moment where they become realities. That was part of the Electoral Count Reform Act. The one really meaningful reform we SAW implemented after 2021 is expediting some judicial resolution of a lot of these debates. They can't guarantee it, but they ease the path towards quicker resolution. Maybe that's a philosophy we need to be brought to bear on a much broader range of these potential electoral issues to the extent they can. But again, again, fairly unlikely we're going to get Congress fixing this one before 2028, I think.
- [69:24]
Eric Charmella
Yeah. I mean, I would just say also, you know, in the kind of legal scholars debate about this, my, my worry as a layperson is that, you know, if you overly lawyer it and you kind of show that there is any possible crack in the armor of this, you know, constitutional rule that you shall not be elected twice to the presidency, and you say, well, in this area, it's a little bit debata. Debatable. As soon as you show that little bit of daylight, it gives Trump and the people around him the ability to just crack that wide open and make it part of the public narrative, such that for, you know, large parts of his voter base, they go from seeing this as like an outlandish thing that Trump is just doing to, you know, rile up the Democrats and, and troll everyone to, oh, actually, this is legitimate idea. And then it becomes much more mainstream. And then you, you know, you could set up a scenario where it looks something more like what we've seen in France and Romania, where, again, these are completely different scenarios where in the Romanian case, there was a presidential candidate who was found to have misled in official kind of declarations about the funding for his campaign. And so he was barred after he made it in the first round of the presidential election into the runoff. And then he was barred by the Romanian Constitutional Court from running again. And then in the French case, Marine Le Pen, the far right leader who's widely assumed to be the, you know, key candidate in the 2027 French presidential election, she was involved in this embezzlement case and was barred from running. But in those cases, there's enough of a question out there as to whether the courts should have intervened to bar them, such that you're now putting the whole judicial system against the electorate and the will of the people. And you've got a narrative that's bubbling up in both countries and certainly in the, you know, kind of right wing of the United States political system that actually these courts were disenfranchising people when French and Romanian voters should have gotten the chance to make their wishes known at the ballot box. And so I think to the extent that the debate shapes up to show any kind of ambiguity in here, then you could again get the overwhelming move towards a narrative that actually people should decide, decide this, voters should decide this in 2028 and the court should not intervene. And that's a really dangerous scenario to me. So I hope that, you know, the legal scholars don't get too clever by half and just kind of show that actually this is pretty damn clear.
- [72:00]
Scott R. Anderson
Eric, I have bad news for you about legal scholars, unfortunately, but we will have to see. And something tells me we will be back talking about this at some point in, in the next three years, perhaps with some more legal scholars on one or the other side or likely both sides of the equation. Until then, we are out of time for this week's episode of Rational Security. But this would not be Rational Security if we did not leave you with some object lessons to ponder over in the week to come. Natalie, what do you have for us this week?
- [72:26]
Natalie Orpet
I have a thing that I am obsessed with that I have not yet talked about. I know Scott shares my obsession on this one, but a recent happening made me refocus, which is that when I went out to ride my E bike to work the other day, I had a flat tire and I almost cried because I love my E bike so, so much and I love commuting through terrible DC traffic. And I mentally make faces at all of the cars that I pass while getting to work much faster than I would if I were driving. And I confess that I have an E bike that is basically the bicycle version of a minivan because it can fit fit both of my children and three bags. And if my children aren't on it, I can fit like three weeks of groceries on there and I look ridiculous. I am well aware of this, but I love it so, so much and I just wanted to share that with all of you.
- [73:21]
Scott R. Anderson
I have to say I'm a convert too. I don't own one E bike. I own two E bikes. I own both my dad minivan E bike as well as a hip, cool, sleek road bike looking minibike that I try to ride to work but the brakes have been need replacing on that one. So I've been riding the dad bike around. They're both great. They're both great E bikes. Great way around to get around the city if you're in Washington D.C. or really most cities if they're not giant hills. And frankly if it's an E bike, if there are giant hills, what a great way to get around. I'm a complete convert. I rented an E bike. I was in New York City on Monday. I rented an E bike and biked across Central Park. I got to a meeting in like 10 minutes that was going to take me 45 minutes to take my subway. It's great. Highly recommendation. On that note, my object lesson for this week is I got to spend a night in New York City this past week, which was lovely. It was a Sunday night. I had dinner plans that ended up canceling on me. So I had a night out by myself in a bar and restaurant. And while everyone around me took deep, deep pity on me and they were not shy about it, treating me as I read my Kindle by myself in a bar and restaurant. It was wonderful because I have two small children and I haven't had a night to myself in years. So it was great. But it was my first chance to go back to some places I love. And I'm going to drop a name. Drop one. It is a bar in the East Village of New York called Amor e Amargo. It is also a wonderful Amaro and bitters store, an aperitivo store. It's right in the East Village, I think on 6th and Avenue A there about that intersection. But they just renovated their bar, opened up a new bar space. A renovated old bar space behind the store and around the corner. Corner, that's the perfect bar. It's small, it's cozy, you can talk to the bartender from any corner. It seats like 20 people max. But it's ideal and it has some of the best cocktails. Doing innovative things with aperitivos and Amaros that I think is great. They have an 8Amaro Sazerac that I had that is particularly great. A blended and aged blend of Amaros they use in a Sazerac. It's great. So if you pass through New York, you've got a little extra time. Treat yourself at Amor Amar guy show. It's just great. I was so happy to be able to pop through for my first time back in New York. And I'd realize like two and a half years at this point after formally going there once a week for a very long time. So thrilled to be back. And check it out. If you happen to be in the area, Eric, why don't you bring us home? What do you have for us this week?
- [75:30]
Eric Charmella
Well, MYOPDEC lesson actually dovetails very nicely with yours. It's about a new book that I just picked up a couple weeks ago at Lost City Books in Adams Morgan. It's called Language City the Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York. And it is a really fascinating portrait of New York City and the variety of language spoken there through the lens of six speakers of highly endangered languages and talks about, you know, the process of immigration to New York and how those languages have been preserved in certain communities and have also come up, up against sort of the overwhelming influence of English and Spanish and are on the verge of sort of dying out. And there's a whole group within New York that is, it's called the Endangered Language alliance and they work on preservation of these languages. And for anyone who's interested in linguistic diversity and just sort of reading about the city of New York from a very different perspective, I would encourage you to take a look. It's by Ross Perlin.
- [76:33]
Scott R. Anderson
Ooh, wonderful. I will check that out. That is a topic I'm very interested in. That's fascinating. I am interested because if you ever go to the Outer Banks, North Carolina, where I spent most of my childhood summers, if you go to the Outer Islands like Ocracroek, they have the craziest accents and language you've ever heard. It's called the Ocracook Brogue because it's descended from a blend of like Caribbean language and regional accents in Europe that was just hyper isolated and developed in its own direction, it's fascinating. There are a couple of great documentaries about that. And so this has become a topic of great interest to me. I will have to check this out. Well, with that, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. Rational Security is, of course, a production of Lawfare, so be sure to visit lawfairmedia.org for our show page with links to past episodes, for our written work and the written work of other Lawfare contributors, and for informational Lawfare's other phenomenal podcast series, including Escalation in a Podcatcher near you today. While you're at it, be sure to follow Lawfare on social media. Wherever you socialize your media, be sure to leave it rating or review wherever you might be listening. And sign up to become a material supporter of Lawfare on Patreon for an ad free version of this podcast and other special benefits. For more information, visit lawfairmedia.org support our audio engineer producer this week was Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo, and our music, as always, was performed by Sophia Yan and we are once again edited by the wonderful Jen Pacha. On behalf of my guests Eric and Natalie, I am Scott R. Andersen and we will talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye.
- [78:03]
Sophia Yan
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